Wednesday, January 28, 2009

How many more jobs would the stimulus bill create if we increased NOAA’s money from $400 million to $401 million?

This has been bugging me about the so-called “stimulus” bill. It’s $825 million on paper – something over a trillion dollars once it’s all said and done. Or so I’ve read.

So here’s my question: did they first decide that they were going to spend $825 million and then figure out how? Or did they look for all the ways they could “stimulate the economy” and “create jobs” and it all added up to roughly $825 million?

Can anybody even answer that question?

Here’s another one: according to Jim Geraghty, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is getting $400 million in the “stimulus” bill.

How many jobs will that create? And if that will create X amount of jobs, then wouldn’t $401 million have created marginally more?

Or did somebody actually do an analysis and decide that, once the $400 million threshold is reached, the law of diminishing returns sets in and we’re better off spending the next $1 million elsewhere?